'Mystery video' is the dark cloud that hangs over Obama campaign these days

How desperate are the opponents of Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations to see the U.S. senator from Illinois lose the Democratic primary – even though the campaign season ended Tuesday with him narrowly ahead of opponent Hillary R. Clinton?

So desperate that many are more than willing to support talk of “the video” – the one that supposedly is so outrageous that it will destroy the concept of Obama as a credible political candidate and ensure that Clinton gets to run against Republican John McCain come the Nov. 4 elections.

AT STAKE IS a “mystery tape” of Obama’s wife, Michelle, giving a speech where she makes “racist” comments. What those comments are, what context they were made in, who came up with this tape – none of this is known.

All we hear is that the tape is supposedly so outrageous that all those super-delegates who have come out publicly for Obama will be forced to go out of their way to kiss Clinton’s butt, beg for her forgiveness for their act of political treachery and will wind up voting Hillary come the Democratic convention in Denver.

One can hear the glee in people’s voices when they talk about this tape. I first heard about it while flipping around morning news television programs this week and Mancow Muller (a nationally syndicated radio personality who makes Howard Stern appear to be one of those respectable political pundits from PBS) was telling the morning anchor crew at WFLD-TV how his “sources” told him this tape would give the nomination to Hillary.

Now I don’t think Muller has great political sources, or even knows what he is talking about when it comes to electoral politics. But he is passing along the contents of the rumor mill among people who are desperate to have Anybody But Obama running for president.

IN FACT, MY sources on this tape amount to “Newsmax” magazine, a publication and website that openly spin news of national politics to the interests of social conservatives. And the magazine admits it is getting this story from a weblog that merely reports political people are trying to figure out if such a tape really exists.

So there’s a chance this is wishful thinking from Obama’s opponents, who for months whined that we should allow the primary election process to come to a completion before anybody drops out.

Now that it has come to an end and Obama remains ahead in the delegate count (which is the only thing that really matters), they want to extend it yet again.

To support their obsession, they’re eager to support talk of a video, although my guess is that these people are better off if a cassette never surfaces. Because then, people can create in their own minds what they would like the content to be.

CHANCES ARE, THOSE imaginary videos are more outrageous than anything that might exist. If it ever does turn up, the video would probably be a letdown.

If there really is a video, I suspect that the notion of Michelle Obama’s comments being “racist” depends purely on how one wants to define racism, and says more about the person’s character than it does about Michelle.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that she made a speech at some point before a predominantly African-American group and made comments about people standing up for their rights. With creative editing so that only the barest of snippets of video and audio are seen and heard, it could be interpreted as a comment that white people have to suffer as a result.

That’s just my guess. I don’t know. But it is all too believable, since many of the people who go out of their way to point out black racism really get offended at the thought that black people do not approach this country’s story from the same angle as they do.

AT TIMES, IT comes off as white racists trying to detract from their own negativity by shifting attention to someone else. Other times, it comes off as someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

It’s a lot like the previous campaign “scandal” that cropped up earlier this year involving Michelle Obama – when she told a campaign rally in Wisconsin that she was “proud” for the first time in her adult life to be a U.S. citizen because of the positive reaction her husband’s presidential campaign has received from people regardless of race.

That still strikes me as being an incredibly positive comment that praises people and the point we as a society are at today. Of course, some want to interpret it as her bashing white people for their actions of the past, as though pointing out past racism is a racist act in and of itself.

Now why am I devoting so much attention to the possibility that this video exists? Aside from the notion that it made me nauseous to see Muller pass himself off as a political pundit (and the morning anchor team at Chicago’s Fox affiliate just bobbing their heads in support), it does strike me as reflective of the mood of the most hard-core of Clinton people.

THEY ARE MORE than willing to accept a presidential nomination that comes from character assassination after a primary season that showed them falling just short.

For what it is worth, Hillary R. Clinton ran a legitimate campaign and showed she has significant support in this country (which I’m sure irritates those people who detest the memory of Bill Clinton), and she deserves to be treated with respect – personally and politically.

But she lost. Want a sports analogy? Team Clinton was losing by three runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, and staged a rally that scored only two runs. She still lost.

It ought to be over.

BUT CLINTON HAS a difficult decision to make in the next day or so.

With her only chance now of getting the nomination is to engage in the hard-core nasty politics of trying to publicly steal away those super-delegates who already have committed themselves to Obama, how desperate is she?

Now electoral politics “ain’t beanbag.” It gets nasty, as does the operations of government. Part of what watching a campaign is about is to see how the candidates respond to adversity.

Watching Obama have to cope with Clinton’s allegations and the miscellaneous garbage that came up during the campaign served a legitimate purpose. It gives us an idea of how he will react when dealing with a hostile Congress or foreign nation that would love nothing more than to make a “President Obama” look stupid.

I ALSO DON’T doubt that a “President Obama” is going to deal with unique hostilities from people who are offended by his bi-racial background (bigots exist, even though many of us don’t want to talk about it). We need to know if he will collapse under that pressure.

But continuing this campaign beyond the primary season takes politicking to a new low level. We’re going to learn in the next couple of days whether Hillary Clinton was just engaging in the hard-core type of politics that it takes to win a campaign, or whether she’s really so cold that perhaps Newt Gingrich’s mother was correct when she offered her whispered assessment of the then-first lady on national television.

A part of me believes Clinton is enough of a political professional (which is not a slur) to want to handle the next few days in a dignified manner. After all, she has a political legacy to think about, and also would like to be able to return to the U.S. Senate in a powerful position – if she doesn’t decide to take the advice of New York types and run for governor at some point in the future.

But I also realize that if she were to decide to take the low road and carry on a fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention, her most hard-core of supporters would not hold it against her.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: “The video” is now a sword hanging over Campaign Obama, (http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Michelle_obama_tape/2008/06/02/100888.html?s=al&promo_code=6382-1) one that could drop now, or in October or perhaps never – but still has to be worried about.

Now, it’s up to the super-delegates, who appear to be backing Barack (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/02/AR2008060202769.html?wpisrc=newsletter) in this campaign season.